


The Marks We Bear

by CaptainAmelia22



Series: Rescuemepotts' Jaegercon Bingo Card-#4 [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Jaegercon Bingo, Shower Sex, Tattoos, Tumblr: jaegercon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/CaptainAmelia22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh stumbles across something in the Shatterdome's E-Block showers and gets to know some of his teammates a little better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marks We Bear

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Jaegercon Bingo Challenge. 
> 
> I have card #4 and one of the prompts is tattoos. 
> 
> This fic just naturally occurred. 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> -M

The first and last time Becket sees the Kaidanovsky woman naked he doesn’t even realize she’s actually _naked_ until it’s far too late to back out of the showers.  

The only thing he notices at the time is her tattoos.

And the fact that every inch of her skin is covered in them.

She is standing before him, her drift partner at her back, her legs spread for his touch and her red lips are curled in a cold sneer.  Her black eyes, so much darker than he would have thought possible, are glinting dangerously and he can’t stop staring as they rock together in perfect harmony.

It's stunning.

But not as stunning as her tattoos-that he's sure of.

There are stars on her shoulders-ten pointed stars, one in each hollow-and they are blacker than her eyes. There are stars on her knees as well and the double headed eagles of her country frame each; he can tell that ink is newer than the stars but he tries to ignore that.  Anastazia Roses, extinct now, since the Kaiju came through the Breach, blossom on each foot, as beautiful and regal as the actual flowers had once been.

Her Jaeger spreads along her ribcage and along the underside of her right breast, all red, black and green fury and it’s actually pretty realistic-something he’ll never be able to forget every time someone toasts Cherno Alpha and her crew, after the Breach is closed.

Cyrillic scrawls her arms, her collarbones, her hips and he can read enough Russian to know that those ancient words are telling her story.

Her kills.

Her loves.

His eyes flash to meet her partner’s and he flushes when the man’s teeth bare through his black beard and a pale blue eye closes in a wink.

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he stammers almost too late to be polite as he backs away from their stall but still he can’t stop looking; she’s all ivory skin and tumbled platinum blonde hair.

The black lines stand out like the Jaegers bunking in the bowels of the Shatterdome- unmistakable and deadly.  There is a Kaiju on her right thigh, the first one she and her partner brought down on the Siberian shoreline and he shivers at the sight of curved claws digging into her skin.  The Cyrillic trailing its scaled body is brutal and bloodthirsty and he finds himself wishing he could have seen _that_ battle.  

“You don’t have to run, little bear,” she purrs as her partner rocks behind her, his fingers tightening along her hip bones and her own fingers begin to dig into the tile at her sides as she rocks back to meet him, her hips undulating into his touch.  Her accent is thick, snarling in the still silence of the showers and he can see their kills stretching along her left collarbone, the lines clean and sharp as only Russian tattoo artists can hope to achieve.

Six Kaiju kills.

He remembers seeing the same lines on the left breasts of their armor and he can’t help being impressed.  Six kills is amazing.

Especially in such an ancient and battered rust bucket of a Mark I Jaeger.  

Not even he and Yancy got that many in Gipsy’s golden years.

“There is room for one more, little bear,” she says so softly, the sound of her palm patting the tile wall beside her echoing around them and her voice is just a faint growl now-she and her partner are moving in a rhythm he can’t help being envious of.

They move in sync, even in the showers, and that alone is sign enough that they are drift compatible.  

The only ones in the entire PPDC not of each other’s blood.  The only ones to hold a Handshake for more than three hours.  

They move as one, breathe as one, even outside of the drift.

She’s panting now, her words more Russian than English and still he can’t seem to find an end to the ink on her skin.  Her partner has only one tattoo-that Raleigh can see-and it’s on the heart finger of his left hand.  Twisted black lines twine the massive joint and Raleigh begins to understand, finally, who these two are.  

“Come, little bear,” she murmurs, laughter bubbling in her throat and blonde hair falling into her eyes.  “Learn something new today.”

Raleigh shakes his head and clears his throat, making her smile deepen and his cheeks darken as she arches just a bit, back to meet her partner and her hand rises over her head to tangle in the man’s hair. Their rhythm has increased in intensity and he is murmuring to her in Russian, his lips never leaving her pale and inked skin.

Raleigh finds himself envying their care and their rhythm.  Their obvious love for the other.

He’d never achieved that with anyone.

Even Yancy.   

The Kaidanovsky woman’s toes curl into the damp cement at their feet and her fingers tighten upon the back of her partner’s head-even her hands are tattooed and Raleigh just catches the sight of a twisted black ring of ink on her left ring finger before it disappears into the tangled and dampened platinum curls of the man’s hair.

His eyes flash to meet hers once more through the steam of the showers and her smile is sad now, her eyes dark with regret and building passion.  

“We will see you in the drift, little bear,” she says as her partner (her husband-Raleigh knows that now) cries out and buries his face in her tattooed shoulder.  “Do not forget us.”  

Raleigh, his arms tight around his towel and kit, nods.  “Y-yes ma’am,” he stammers, his words polite but his mind still enraptured with the ink on her skin.

Everywhere he looks there is ink and as her eyes flutter closed and she sobs something in Russian that he will never understand, he catches sight of what marks the pale skin on her back.

It’s them, the Kaidanovsky’s, in their Jaeger amor, facing a rising sun off the Siberian Wall and at their feet (the last knob of her spine) is a single rose.

An Anastazia Rose.  

He glances over his shoulder one last time as he leaves the E-Block showers, hoping to see more of the woman’s stark tattoos but instead he sees something more beautiful-more heartbreaking.  His last sight of the Russians is them, standing in the shower, steam swirling around their sweat-dampened bodies, their foreheads pressed together and their fingers tangled with each others.

He can’t tell where her skin ends and her partner’s begins.

They fit together as perfectly as they fit into their Jaeger.  

He stands in the doorway for a moment, caught in the beauty that is their partnership and he finds himself hoping-hoping that they will be able to come out of this whole mess intact.

That she’ll be able to add another sharp line to her left collarbone and maybe some more Cyrillic to her hips.

He hopes her partner will be able to kiss those freshly inked lines at night in their bunk, when she gets back from the tattooist.

He hopes...

He hopes somebody will be able to survive the end of the world.

But as he makes his way from the showers to his bunk, the end of the world comes calling and he realizes as he rushes to the Shatterdome con-room, he realizes the Russians never had a chance.

Cherno Alpha is deployed to her doom and Sasha Kaidanovsky does not gain another kill on her left collarbone that Aleksis can kiss at night when they fall asleep in their bunk.  

**

“Wha-dya want, kid?” the Hong Kong based tattoo artists asks three weeks after the Breach is closed.  Raleigh stands awkwardly before the tiny man covered in Kaiju ink and swallows nervously.

 _I can’t believe I’m doing this,_ he thinks to himself as the artist glares at him and taps a pen on the sketch pad in his arms.   _This is so ridiculous!  She’d hate this.  I-_

He jumps when a tiny hand slips into his and their fingers tangle instinctively together.  

“We would both like an  Anastazia Rose, please, on our left shoulders,” she says and he smiles shakily down at her.

“Thanks Mako,” he says softly as she smiles serenely up at him; he can hear her now, hear her thoughts and they both move in a rhythm he would have envied just a few weeks ago.  He found her in the drift and she saved him.  “Thanks for-for being here with me.”

She squeezes his fingers and rests her head on his shoulder as the artist grumbles around them and prepares two couches for their bodies.  “We’re partners Raleigh,” she says gently as she holds him, comforts him.  “Like them.  We owe this to the Kaidanovsky’s.”

He nods as he is led to a black leather couch and is told to strip out of his stiff funeral suit.  As he takes his seat, Mako beside him, their hands stretched between their couches and their fingers still tangled together, he glances at the artist sketching beside him.  “Could you add something to mine, please?” he asks and the little man nods before handing a notepad to him when he asks.  Raleigh sketches the symbols out for the man on a scrap of paper and the artist’s eyebrows rise as he raises the paper to the light.

_навсегда в дрейф_

Mako’s serene smile deepens as she catches sight of the lines her partner scrawled and she nods.  “It is perfect Raleigh.  Perfect for them.”  

Raleigh sighs and nods.  “It is, it’s perfect for all of us,” he mutters as the artist begins to prepare his skin.  

**

“What does that mean?” Herc asks that night in the mess hall, his eyes locked on the black ink staining Raleigh’s skin.  His cheeks are pale, his jaw tight, but his eyes seem a little more alive now, a little more...human.

His gaze skates over the Cyrillic curving under the gentle curve of the rose on Raleigh’s left shoulder and Raleigh shifts ever so slightly, making his skin prickle in agony.  

He glances at Mako curled into his side and she smiles sleepily at him; her skin is pale beneath the fresh ink and he wonders if she’ll let him kiss it that night when he takes her to his bunk.

He hopes so.  

“It means, ‘Forever in the Drift,’” Raleigh says quietly to the older man sitting across from him, his son’s dog at his feet, and both men are quiet after that for a long time.  

“It’s perfect,” Herc says, his voice rough and his eyes downcast.  “Perfect for every single one of us.”  

He claps Raleigh on the shoulder, making the younger man hiss in pain and he leaves the mess hall, Max on his heels.  

Raleigh sits for a bit after the older ranger’s exit, his arm tight around a sleeping Mako and he tries to not think about steam wreathed ink and an ancient Jaeger falling beneath the claws of a deadly Kaiju.  

But he will never escape it, never escape the memories of an accented voice saying, _We will see you in the drift, little bear. Do not forget us._

“I don’t think I ever could, Sasha Kaidanovsky,” he says quietly as he scoops Mako into his arms and presses a gentle kiss to her freshly inked skin that night in his bunk.  “I don’t think I ever could.”  

  



End file.
